The Rules of Debate

[Sparko]

Not a good outcome for Trump regardless, since he needs to win over some independents to have a good shot at winning (given the never-Trumpers).

well they didn't seem to have any "undecided" in the poll. But regardless, it hardly seems "scientific" to have such a lopsided pool of people. All it shows is that republicans think Trump won and Democrats think Hillary won. no real surprise there.

[Sparko]

Yep. This liberal fantasy that you can artificially increase the cost of labor without it having any negative economic impact is baffling, especially when it has been documented time and time and time and time again that raising the minimum wage increases the price of goods and services and decreases employment!

Of course we are dealing with low-information dullards who think that a 2% decrease in employment is somehow a net gain (look at how many of the "usual suspects" "Amen'd" that post. )

yeah his argument seems to be "well the economy is even worse than it used to be when minimum wages were less so you are wrong!" - well derp. That just means the effect of raising minimum wages is worse on the economy than expected. You have increased wages but the cost of living increased even more. Net result: you are poorer than before. So the liberals think the solution is to do it all over again and raise the wages even more. idiots.

[The Thinker]

from the poll:

26% of the respondents who participated in tonight's survey identified themselves as Republicans,
41% identified themselves as Democrats, and
33% identified themselves as Independant

So no surprise at the results of that "scientific" poll.

Wow. You really don't know how scientific polling works don't you. I'm not surprised since religious people don't tend to care much for science and prefer emotion based "data".

Scientific polling tries to match the percentage of the respondents with the percentage of the country reporting as the political affiliation. In the US, 27% of Americans identify as republican, which closely matches the percentage in the survey. What did you expect? 50/50 equality?

Now it does seem that dems were over represented, since I see 31% of Americans identifying as democrats vs 41% in the survey. Independents were also under represented. But the party affiliations vary depending on what surveys you look at.

Gallup's is here: http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx

There is a margin or error of 4.5% which could account for that. But basically the numbers are mostly correct with this poll. Most Americans think Hillary won the debate and her win margin is way beyond the margin or error.

So yes, the only scientific poll does indeed show most Americans think she won.

Try to be more logical.

[The Thinker]

my argument doesn't fail. If you raise the minimum wage, you will make things even worse! Everyone will have to pay their workers more. Colleges will have to pay their minimum wage workers more, and will also have to pay their higher paid workers more, up the line, raising the cost of college even more, same with rent, homes, hamburgers, trucking and shipping costs, material costs, manufacturing costs, etc.

No, it does fail, because if you don't raise it more and more Americans will not be able to afford healthcare, college and housing costs, and this will contribute to the break down of the family, higher unemployment, and a sluggish economy because with less disposable income, people spend less on the things they like.

College costs have been rising even with a flat or lower minimum wage when factoring inflation, so your claim there utterly fails.

Increased labor costs will in some areas get passed onto the item cost, but the effect they will have will not be worse than the gains in allowing people to have more disposable income to spend on recreational things that keeps the economy afloat.

If your argument were true the country would have had a recession ever time we've raised the min wage and that hasn't happened.

Your argument is a conservative, trickle down fantasy that has been proven false over and over again.

[The Thinker]

Yep. This liberal fantasy that you can artificially increase the cost of labor without it having any negative economic impact is baffling, especially when it has been documented time and time and time and time again that raising the minimum wage increases the price of goods and services and decreases employment!

Of course we are dealing with low-information dullards who think that a 2% decrease in employment is somehow a net gain (look at how many of the "usual suspects" "Amen'd" that post. )

The argument is not that it has zero negative impact, the argument is that the gains you get from raising the min wage out weigh any negative results.

[One Bad Pig]

Wow. You really don't know how scientific polling works don't you. I'm not surprised since religious people don't tend to care much for science and prefer emotion based "data".

Derp. Polling IS emotion-based "data".

[Jaecp]

Derp. Polling IS emotion-based "data".

No, polling is belief based data and your scare quotes are unwarranted. Sparko wrapped scare quotes around the word scientific because more Democrats were talked to than Republicans and the implication is clear that the poll was not scientific which is just... no.

Honestly the bigger takeaway here is that, while the poll contained 26% people who self identify as Republic, Trump got 27%. That is really interesting. Did really only 1% of the 33% of the poll that were independents think trump did better or is it more likely that plenty of self identified Republicans just didn't like their candidates terrible terrible debate performance? The other scores are really neat too

[Starlight]

When I was a kid, the minimum wage was $1.65 per hour. But I could buy a big mac for 80 cents. A steak cost $2 at a restaurant. A car cost $4K. Now the minimum wage is $7.25. a big mac costs $4, a steak costs $10 and a car costs $25K.

Yes, inflation exists and prices go up over time. Current economic wisdom is that it's ideal for inflation to be somewhere around 2% per year (I question this).

That is one reason it is important to regularly raise the minimum wage in order to keep up with inflation. Otherwise the value of the minimum wage essentially goes down over time.

The more wages for everyone goes up, the more cost of everything goes up. You can never get ahead by raising the minimum wage.

If you pay everybody more across the board, then the cost of everything will likely go up, yes. Because there is a total amount of income (GDP) that is being divided among everyone, and you can't just magically make there be more total income by giving everyone more money - doing so will simply devalue money (i.e. cause inflation). However what you absolutely can do is change the distribution of that existing income among the people. That's what raising the minimum wage does - forces the people earning the least to be paid slightly more at the expense of those earning more. e.g. Walmart is the biggest minimum wage employer in the US, and the family that owns it is the richest family in the US, so by forcing them to pay their employees more you distribute the income from their business slightly more to their employees and slightly less to their own pockets.

[Sparko]

Yes, inflation exists and prices go up over time. Current economic wisdom is that it's ideal for inflation to be somewhere around 2% per year (I question this).

That is one reason it is important to regularly raise the minimum wage in order to keep up with inflation. Otherwise the value of the minimum wage essentially goes down over time.

If you pay everybody more across the board, then the cost of everything will likely go up, yes. Because there is a total amount of income (GDP) that is being divided among everyone, and you can't just magically make there be more total income by giving everyone more money - doing so will simply devalue money (i.e. cause inflation). However what you absolutely can do is change the distribution of that existing income among the people. That's what raising the minimum wage does - forces the people earning the least to be paid slightly more at the expense of those earning more. e.g. Walmart is the biggest minimum wage employer in the US, and the family that owns it is the richest family in the US, so by forcing them to pay their employees more you distribute the income from their business slightly more to their employees and slightly less to their own pockets.

You realize that rising wages are part of what CAUSES inflation, right? That was what I was explaining earlier. Raise wages, you raise the cost of goods. That means you pay more for an item. That is inflation. get it?

also paying the lower end more, means that the middle will want more too, since they are now being paid "less" because of the rise at the low end. So wages "trickle up" the ladder and everyone gets paid more and everything costs more. So no, you don't "take from the rich and give to the poor"

[Raphael]

Nate Silver is tracking a pretty big poll bounce in Clinton's favour
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...ex_cid=rrpromo

[Jaecp]

Nate Silver is tracking a pretty big poll bounce in Clinton's favour
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...ex_cid=rrpromo

I've been looking at that all morning <3

Seem's like a lot of the 9% gain he's tracking with her is because florida is now leaning her way by 3 points, Nevada +1.5, and she's only down in NC by 5 which is insane

The Nowcast is pretty sick, too.

[Starlight]

You realize that rising wages are part of what CAUSES inflation, right?

If everyone from the minimum wage worker to the CEO to the shareholder gets paid more, then yes, inflation will likely result. But if only some of them get paid more at the expense of others - e.g. minimum wage workers get paid more while CEOs and shareholders get paid less, then there is likely no inflationary result.

Raise wages, you raise the cost of goods.

An important thing to note is that even if you raised all wages, goods would not go up by the same amount. Because wages are only one of the many costs of business. Other costs include leasing shop/office space, buying raw materials etc. Commonly wages are only around 1/3rd of the total costs of the business. So lets say the business one day decides to double the wages of all its staff. The business may need to raise the price of its product by about 1/3rd to compensate itself for the extra pay. Note that the staff wages have gone up by three times as much as the goods being sold have, because the staff costs were only 1/3rd of the business's total costs, so the staff are better off even after the inflated prices. They can now buy more of the goods that their own company is selling than they could before.

However, raising the minimum wage is different because:
1. You're own raising the wages for some workers, not all of them. A given company might spend 1/3rd of its costs on all employees, but will perhaps only spend 5% of its costs on all its minimum wage employees. So if it raises prices to compensate for doubling the salaries of the minimum wage employees, it will only need to raise the price of its products 5%. So the minimum wage employees will be a lot better off after the inflation is factored in. They now have a lot more spending power (almost double), which they have gained at the expense of everyone else loosing a little bit each (-5% each due to price increases).

2. All businesses are hit with the minimum wage increases simultaneously, which is different to only one business raising its employees wages. Poor people who live 'paycheck to paycheck' by definition spend 100% of their income each week. So the simultaneous pay raise in all businesses means that all across the city/country people earning minimum wage suddenly have a bit more income, and they will spend it, so all across the city/country businesses are suddenly seeing an upsurge in the number of their products purchased, and thus bringing in more revenue. This upswing in revenue may completely or partially compensate them for the slight raise in what they are paying their minimum wage employees.

[One Bad Pig]

No, polling is belief based data and your scare quotes are unwarranted.

Regardless, it's based on subjective, not objective, data - and the guy I'm responding to is responsible for the scare quotes.

Sparko wrapped scare quotes around the word scientific because more Democrats were talked to than Republicans and the implication is clear that the poll was not scientific which is just... no.

Eh, anything based on subjective data isn't especially sciency. All the fancy number-crunching in the world isn't going to change the fact that it's based on subjective data.

Honestly the bigger takeaway here is that, while the poll contained 26% people who self identify as Republic, Trump got 27%. That is really interesting. Did really only 1% of the 33% of the poll that were independents think trump did better or is it more likely that plenty of self identified Republicans just didn't like their candidates terrible terrible debate performance? The other scores are really neat too

I agree. This was not a win for Trump.

[Jaecp]

Regardless, it's based on subjective, not objective, data - and the guy I'm responding to is responsible for the scare quotes. --- Please be specific

So? This is about what what people believe. Their beliefs(and everything that goes into them) are subjective, but that they believe what they do isn't. Given that the point of polling is know the frequency of a belief in a larger population the problem isn't this subjectivity v objectivity, but other things.

https://onlinecourses.science.psu.ed...ed%20FINAL.pdf

What makes a poll scientific can, largely, be found in that pdf (3,5 pages) if you're so inclined.

Eh, anything based on subjective data isn't especially sciency. All the fancy number-crunching in the world isn't going to change the fact that it's based on subjective data.

Do you not believe in the basic premise of polls?

[The Thinker]

Derp. Polling IS emotion-based "data".

It's data you gather scientifically, as opposed from simply feeling X vs Y, or unscientific online polls. Obviously the content here is to gather what people feel, it's the methodology for how you collect that data that matters. Duh.